Newsletter Feb 2019 – Peace and the Quest for Oneness

Greetings, friend. John here.

I hope your new year is going well. Now that we’re around a month or so into it, you should be getting a feel whether it’s moving in the new direction you hoped, or you’re stuck in a rut, creating more of the same.

Mine is increasingly focused on the conflict in our world, most notably the political battles that play out through social media. While it provides an outlet to release some of the pent-up dissatisfaction with the status quo, too often those energies spew forth as hatred, ridicule and name-calling against those who don’t see it our way.

Everyone talks. No one seems to listen, much less care, what others think or how they see it. Instead, they gravitate toward people who tell them what they want to hear, reinforcing existing beliefs and perspectives without ever considering the validity of others’.

These echo chambers make it easy to be outraged, triggering us every time we turn around. Tweaking our fears. Dangling our desires. And painting everyone who doesn’t share them as some sort of villain trying to deny us the future we want.

Yet, the awakening soul knows there’s more. The problem is letting go of our attachment to the things in us that make us susceptible to being dragged into the battle.

We Are More Than We Know

By now you know I believe our lives allow us to experience ourselves as we learn to love and be loved. We grow. Consciousness expands. And we become more than we are, in turn helping our world evolve into more of what it can be.

Through this process we evolve. Our separation diminishes as we evolve toward our Creator and source of our being. And our lives change as we walk our talk and put to work in our lives all the good we find inside.

This is, in a nutshell, a journey along the spiritual path. Its destination is the Oneness at our core.

It matters little whether it ends with death in this life and our souls pass on to Heaven or wherever else we’re going, or if it’s just a stop on that journey, to be continued in other lives, worlds or dimensions. After all, Jesus said our Father’s house has many rooms. And the way I like to see it is this life is just one of them we get to explore.

Now, if Oneness is the goal, what in the world does all this conflict have to do with getting there? How can our differences be used to return to Oneness?

Locked in the separateness of our individuality, it wouldn’t seem that we can. For if those we disagree with are just as much a part of that Oneness of All That Is as we are, then reinforcing those differences in conflict would seem to offer little hope of reaching our destination.

But if we saw things another way, that we’re each an integral part of the whole going back to the same place, would we still fight to say our way is right and theirs is wrong? Or might we see our differences as illusions of our separation from God to be dissolved as we learn about love?

And just as importantly, to see that our conflicts are warning signs of schisms within the whole of our being that need to be healed if we’re to get where we want to go?

The quest to know God and return to Oneness not only offers a reason why we should try to evolve beyond the fighting. It also recognizes that inner conflicts eat away at us from the inside, and that if we’re to find peace, much less all get there together, we need to find a way to let go of the reasons we fight and the things we fight over — because there’s always another way.

More Separation is NOT the Goal

The problem with life in a dualistic, 3D world is we are at the center of our universe, pitted against everyone else to get our piece of the pie. Or so it appears.

But when we identify with God, with others and the world around us as much as we do with these individualized identities we know ourselves as, then conflict becomes a matter of making war upon ourselves.

As Lincoln said, a house divided cannot stand.

Well, a god-source divided into separated individualities cannot be whole until it sees all those differences as a necessary part of that whole, to be embraced and brought along with all other parts of itself.

To put it another way, we’re all going to the same place. Though it seems we make the journey alone, none of us can get there by ourselves. For the objective is unity consciousness through the wholeness of the One presence that comprises all existence.

To borrow a phrase now circulating in some circles, “Where we go One, we go All.”

Going One, with awareness and seeking of that Oneness, could be pretty hard if we think the way is to make war on part of that reality and those who embrace it.

But forced togetherness under the guise of collectivism won’t do it. Individuals are vested with free will. Only they can subordinate it to Oneness. It cannot be imposed on others; only voluntarily embraced. So it’s well nigh impossible to think we can return to Oneness by forcing others to go along with our way of seeing things.

The Challenge at Hand

The test for all who are awakening to their journey is how to work with and within this conflict to move toward Oneness together, despite the efforts of so many to drive wedges between us and keep us apart.

Bringing some along and leaving others behind — or worse, destroying them and their visions for our world in the process — won’t restore that Oneness. At best, it will temporarily suppress elements of our separation without finding the value within them, kicking the can down the road for future generations to deal with. Or not.

The way I see it is we have to move through and beyond the conflict to find a way forward together, or risk destroying this grand experiment in creation and leaving it to God to try again.

We’ll only get there if we each do our part. Doing yours starts with remembering.

Where we go One, we go All.

Find what it means to you, and live it in your life. The world you change will be your own.